


熬夜 | To Stay Up All Night

by virdant



Series: 吃飽了嗎? | Have you eaten your fill? [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Darkness, Food, Gen, Jedi Appreciation (Star Wars), Jedi Culture, Jedi Culture Respected, Late Night Conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:27:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25455412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virdant/pseuds/virdant
Summary: Nights are long, and Obi-Wan has visions, has dreams, has memories of darkness. But companionship and food: they make the nights easier to endure as he waits for dawn.
Relationships: Bant Eerin & Obi-Wan Kenobi, CC-2224 | Cody & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Quinlan Vos
Series: 吃飽了嗎? | Have you eaten your fill? [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832875
Comments: 21
Kudos: 214





	熬夜 | To Stay Up All Night

**Author's Note:**

> 熬夜 | ao-ye; to stay up all night. From the words 熬: to boil/cook-down, to endure and 夜: late-night

Obi-Wan is six, the first time he stays up until the dawn.

Quinlan jolts awake at the sudden surge of terror and exhaustion he senses more than the brush of a foot against his cheek from where he’s lying on his mat. When he opens his eyes, he can see Obi-Wan’s bare feet pattering away from the rest of the initiates on their futons. In the future, Obi-Wan will be better at sneaking out. But at six, as he tries to pick his way across the piles of his fellow initiates on their futons, he does not quite manage.

Quinlan is awake, now.

Quinlan lays on his mat for another long minute, breathing deeply. He closes his eyes and listens to the sound of the creche settled down for the night. Then he gets up and sneaks out after Obi-Wan. He’s better at sneaking, and he doesn’t brush against any of the initiates as he picks through the spaces between futons. 

Obi-Wan hasn’t made it far. He’s drifting more than walking with purpose. He pauses at doorways, brushes his fingers along window ledges, and his feet are bare against the cold ground.

Quinlan, who wears socks to bed, wrinkles his nose at the cold leeching into his feet. Obi-Wan’s feet must be very cold.

“Hey,” he hisses, when he catches up to Obi-Wan, who’s found a window that looks out into the lights of Coruscant to curl up beside. Obi-Wan’s eyes are very wide and very surprised. He squeaks out a small “Quin!” before Quinlan slaps his palm to his mouth to shush him before the creche masters wake up. 

He gets another flash of terror and exhaustion before he pulls his hand away.

Obi-Wan mouths, “Sorry,” mouth drawn.

“What are you doing up?” Quinlan hisses back. He wishes he had his gloves on, but he’ll just have to be careful.

Obi-Wan’s voice is very quiet. “I had a vision.”

“Was it bad?”

He nods, solemnly. 

“Want to talk about it?”

He shakes his head.

Quinlan thinks for a moment, and then he says, “Wait here.”

Quinlan knows where the creche masters keep the snacks. He finds the cabinet—and the key to the cabinet, after touching the lock and concentrating for a bit. He grabs a package of crackers before going to join Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan looks at the package. “What’s that for?”

“For you.” He pries open the package, and grabs a cracker, sets the package between them, and sits down. They’re crispy more than crunchy, sprinkled with some sort of flavored salt that Quinlan can’t quite place. He knows they’re good—that’s why he grabbed them instead of any of the other snacks in the cabinet. He doesn’t know what Obi-Wan likes.

Obi-Wan takes a cracker slowly. “Are we supposed to have this?”

“Nope.” He grins. 

Obi-Wan smiles, tentatively, back.

They sit and eat crackers until the sky lightens with the sun reflecting off of the buildings of Coruscant. The crackers crunch underneath their teeth. Quinlan chases the taste of salt on his fingers. They don’t say much, but Obi-Wan tosses the package away so Quinlan doesn’t have to, and neither of them say anything to the creche masters about the missing crackers. The companionship, the food makes the night easy to endure.

That is the first time.

* * *

As a padawan, Obi-Wan takes to wandering the temple at night. 

Sneaking out after curfew is practically a requirement of being a padawan, and Obi-Wan has had practice since he was an initiate creeping out of the creche. He wanders the hallways of the temple. He sits in the Garden of a Thousand Fountains.

He’s trailing his fingers in a waterfall when there’s a ripple by him. Bant emerges from the water, blinking her large eyes at him. “Obi? What are you doing up?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he points out.

She rolls her eyes. Eye-rolling is always more evocative on Mon Calamari. “I just finished a late shift in the Halls.”

Bant’s been taking healing classes. Sometimes the padawans are assigned night shifts in the Halls of Healing, especially if they’re planning on becoming Healers. Bant’s been assigned to night shifts for a year already. She was probably heading back to her room through the underwater vents.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Obi-Wan says.

“Oh, Obi.” She floats closer. Her webbed hand catches at Obi-Wan’s. “Was it a vision?”

“I don’t know.”

He doesn’t. Sometimes he’s sure that he’s had a vision, sometimes he thinks they’re just dreams. Sometimes they’re vivid, and sometimes they’re just snatches of dread, of terror and misery. Sometimes he thinks they’re memories. Either way, they keep him up all night. It’s only when dawn comes that they fade.

Bant makes a considering hum in the back of her throat, more like a burble than anything else. “Come on.” She levers herself out of the water, wrings out her tunic, and then heads deeper into the Garden.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see!”

This late, the Garden is empty. Still, Obi-Wan steps lightly as they make their way across the paths. Bant guides them, occasionally doubling back as she navigates on the ground instead of through the labyrinth of waterways directly underneath. 

They find their way to a grove of Muja trees by a pond, their branches ripe with fruit. The branches practically droop underneath their weight. Obi-Wan stops and stares, for a moment. “I didn’t realize they were ripe already.” He’d heard they were only flowering a week ago.

Bant flaps a hand at him. “I checked yesterday. I don’t think anybody’s noticed yet.”

If others knew, it would be picked over by now. They’d be having Muja fruit cake in the commissary. The initiates would be hiding hands sticky with juice behind their back in every lesson.

Obi-Wan reaches up, twists a fruit off for himself and another one for Bant. They sit with their feet in the pond as they eat their fill. His mouth fills with sweetness, and his hands are sticky like he’s an initiate again.

He eats three to Bant’s two, and then they lay down on the grass, staring at the glimmer of the night through the leaves and fruits of the trees. He’s full and content, and when he closes his eyes, he thinks he might be able to sleep.

* * *

Obi-Wan is a Knight now; he no longer needs to break curfew, Knights have free run of the Temple, even at late hours. He spends sleepless nights in his own room, sitting on a low chair, nursing a cup of tea in hopes of being able to go back to bed. He has Anakin to worry about, and even though he is deep asleep, he worries at leaving Anakin alone in the rooms.

But sometimes he leaves and wanders the halls.

Quinlan finds him, drags him back to the quarters he shares with Aayla. They sit together in silence with crackers and tea. Quinlan doesn’t ask if it’s a vision, if it’s a dream, if it’s a memory. They just sit in silence until the sun rises, and Obi-Wan returns back to his own quarters, where Anakin is still sleeping the deep sleep of childhood.

Sometimes, Quinlan comes to Obi-Wan’s rooms instead. Obi-Wan lets him in every time. He simmers soup on the stove. He butters bread. He fills the table with food and they pick at it over the course of the night, talking about everything and nothing. They never finish everything on the table, and they pack it away together in silence, their lack of appetite more telling than restless nights.

They sit side-by-side. Quinlan’s hand is warm against his own. Obi-Wan closes his eyes. Behind his eyelids is darkness, so vast that he feels as though he is drowning in it.

He has never slept well. But he sleeps worse, in the wake of Naboo.

* * *

The war never seems to end, and Obi-Wan does not sleep.

He lays in bed during his rest shift and closes his eyes. Sometimes the physical fatigue drags him under, where he dreams of blood and death. He hears cries when he sleeps. The galaxy is so dark.

It seems as though dawn will never come.

He spends more and more time in the windowless quarters on battleships, meditating in lieu of sleeping. There is no dawn to wait for, as they travel through the cold darkness of space. There is just the unending simmer of war.

He takes to wandering the hallways of the ship. There are always men on duty, and they nod at him as he passes by. He goes to the commissary, but meals are served at set times and there is nothing to eat. He makes himself tea and holds the mug between his hands instead of drinking it.

His Commander finds him wandering the halls one shift; steady and stalwart Cody. Cody has a rebuke on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows it down. Instead he falls into step as he always does. 

Obi-Wan retreats to the Officer mess hall. It’s empty, at this shift. Third shift is always lightly staffed, with troops maintaining course, but the majority resting. There’s ration bars available. There’s tea.

Obi-Wan makes them tea. Cody takes a ration bar for each of them. They sit across from each other.

“Why are you awake?” Obi-Wan asks first.

Cody unwraps the bar. He takes a bite. He chews it, with no indication of comfort or discomfort. He swallows. “I could ask the same of you, General.”

Undoubtedly, the stars are streaking by as they fly through hyperspace. If he looked out a viewport, he would see streaks of light. But space feels like an eternal night. And he has never slept well, at night.

He unwraps his own ration bar. It’s dry and chewy. It does not crunch underneath his teeth like the crackers that Quinlan stole when they were initiates. It’s bland, not like the sweet Muja fruit that he and Bant shared as padawans. It’s calories and nutrients. He used to cook soups and bake breads for when Quinlan showed up for long sleepless nights when they were Knights.

But it is food, shared, during the simmering hours of darkness. There is familiarity in that. Cody’s presence is steady and enduring. He remains through long marches through the night.

Obi-Wan murmurs, “When will the war end?” and aches for dawn.

* * *

Obi-Wan stares out into the horizon. The twin suns of Tatooine are rising. He has not slept all night, and soon the heat of the day will sweep across the sand.

He can feel the bright spark of Luke in the distance. A spark of light, kept simmering throughout the night, waiting to shine.

He spreads out his hands and welcomes the dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> ❤️ Enjoyed it? Try the following options:
> 
>   * Follow me on twitter [@virdant](http://virdant.twitter.com)
>   * [Like & retweet on twitter](https://twitter.com/virdant/status/1286107920707420161)
>   * Comment and kudo below
> 



End file.
